How to "Speed Up" Wrist/forearm rotation

Playing Technique
#43

The technical term I believe you’re referring to is proprioception.

It’s is the sense that lets us perceive where and how parts of the body are in space. The pinky isn’t so much an anchor, but a reference point. With the the pinky as reference, your brain knows where the rest of your hand is in relation to the guitar.

Realizing this makes watching Bluegrass players like Molly Tuttle even more astounding. These are players who absolutely rip up and down the strings…without looking and seemingly without a physical reference point. (even though I think its way back, just before their wrist).

#44

Yes thats definitely part of it, but I acually use the pinky as a support aswell, letting me put more force into the hand without it getting out of hand.

Just like the writing example I think has direct correlation to picking technique

It’s the same with a mouse, it’s so much easier if you’ve got your palm down to do small fast movements

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#45

Cool. I’m somewhat the opposite in that I’m a USX player also, but anchoring feels…weird most times.

#46

Do you fully float? I bet you got part of your hand on the guitar? Do you do the Gypsy jazz style?

#47

This is what I mean with an anchor. Just like writing lets you put force into the strings without losing control. Tho you seem to have a lot of force with your elbow @Scottulus so perhaps it’s beyond my experience

#48

No, but my fingers pretty much stay closed. The side of my hand just before my wrist is my reference when on the higher strings. Usually just forward of the bridge. Moving to the lower strings, the side of my hand slides, but remains in contact.

#49

Do you have any videos I can see of you?

#50

Nothing recent that’s representative. I’ll see about creating one later today.

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#51

Most mine are not representative either lol. My skill goes out the window when I press record. Thats my excuse anyway :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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#52

Don’t sell yourself short. NO ONE here has posted a better video than this one you did

You’ll always have this!

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#53

LOL comon man.

I still believe in that concept

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#54

Thanks for the kind words, guys! Oh yes, sucked then, still suck and will likely suck more in the future. It’s hard to be me, what can I say?

lol Let me define this: suck = have to work like a m’effer to get sweet pick driven music to be played on my guitar by me only to be slightly underwhelmed by the work:result ratio…

As far as that motion goes, yep I can still do it - actually better now - it dovetails quite nicely with my DSX stuff - although I tended to do a lot of sweep/economy stuff. The alternate picking that worked for me was always single string or even number of notes per string. The pinky isn’t an anchor, it’s a reference. Imagine that you are finger-painting very quickly with the pinky, and just happen to be holding a pick near some guitar strings… I played for a really long time with a trailing edge version of this as well.

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#55

Not sure if this is useful, but you’re not the only one doing trailing edge wrist/forearm DBX! This guy’s higher speeds seem like pure wrist, but there’s a lot of “twisting” visible when he’s playing slower DBX patterns.

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#56

@eric_divers Hey it’s great to see others out in the wild doing something similar! I think it’s very helpful actually to see people who do similar motions, and are successful at creating music utilizing said motions!

So thanks for sharing, awesome!

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#57

And I must say - I was doing some practice/play this morning and the motion, and everything I do with it is just a “smidge” quicker.

You know, - a “smidge”!

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#59

Apropos of nothing: when I was 14 I could play hammer/pull/legato lines as fast as I liked, locked to a metronome, while barely thinking about it. The left hand was never an issue for me. I’m a lefty playing right-handed.

Edit: Oh, and after a week of working on it I could sweep as fast as I liked too. Forgot about that part.

Edit 2: @Scottulus’s playing sounds great and he should stop saying he “sucks,” because he’s great. Done editing now, I swear.

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#60

So…willful ignorance, then.

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#61

It’s getting better for sure; It’s just kind of one of those things where one might like to umm, sort of “speed things up” a bit in regards to progress, not so much an attitude of fast-tracking it, but maybe an attitude of having every last duck in a row and do it all right the first time!

But really, I think that it’s the trial and error aspect that’s actually where the progress comes from. Fixation on a “magic move” that solves everything is not really realistic, because there’s a whole bunch of combos, setups and moves that yield all kinds of great technical output.

Anyways, I was kind of bricked at doing some stuff 16ths @ 132bpm, and today I moved past that - seems obvious now what I did, but at the time it didn’t seem like there was an obvious answer. lol

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